Half a century ago, we made mistakes in raising children because we were mistaken about what was genuinely best for a child. Today, we make mistakes in raising children because we have developed a thousand and three justifications for why what’s best for the child isn’t really important and doesn’t really matter.

On an emotional level, I understand the fear of “losing” the child or being displaced as the parent of a child you have fully accepted as your own. But this attitude seems to be condoned, rather than discouraged or considered to be something to be dealt with or corrected, and I think it does a disservice to all concerned not to emphasize that while an adopted child is entirely taken into the adopting family, he or she does not necessarily cease to be what he was born as. People seem to treat it as a zero-sum — either he’s “really ours,” or he has some connection to someone else. The possibility that he’s really ours WITH some connection to others is apparently too disturbing to allow.

I find it doubly strange when it appears among Christians with a strong sense of God’s providence who, I should think, would know better than to believe that any act of adoption performed by them could, or should, over-ride (or even negate) the circumstances God brought about in the child’s birth.